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It’s Halloween, and your kids care about one thing: CANDY! How much can I eat before I throw up? Let’s find out!

Parents–especially Pinterest parents–seem to have far more on their minds. Does my kid look cute? And more importantly, does my little girl look sexy sassy? Does she look pretty and girly enough? No? IT’S TUTU TIME.

Spot the difference:

Strength versus beauty, because little boys should be strong, and girls should be “super sweet.” LOVING the stockings.

Evidently, the traditional spidey suits are just too masculine and unpretty for female tots, who need to show off their narrow little waists and plenty of skin.

I have a few ideas about who might be responsible for girls and their parents becoming obsessed with looking pretty and feminine at such an early age,

I don’t know why Renee, below, thinks that you have to put a tutu on a “boy costume” to make it a “girl costume.” To paraphrase Marya Dillon, one of Pinfuriating’s Facebook fans, since when did girls need a tutu to be a superhero?

It’s easy to argue that gender is a construct when you see costumes like this, and realize that parents sort their children into masculine/feminine clothes and activities as soon as they’re old enough to talk.

What will girls think tonight when they see themselves in costumes designed for posing in pictures, while their male friends sport outfits designed for play? Teaching girls that they’re made to sit pretty while boys have all the fun can lead to all sorts of self-esteem issues when they grow up.

When you teach your girls that Halloween is about being cute and “super sweet”, sassy Spidergirl can turn into sexy Spiderslut when they grow up. Trick or treat!

I despise watching so many friends desperately adhere to gender constructs regarding their babies. I grew up playing with legos, in the sandbox, drawing roads on a whiteboard for my Hot Wheels, as well as playing house, dragging a Cabbage Patch Doll everywhere, and begging for a ceramic tea set. I wore whatever was easiest to clean and my hair how I wanted, long and short. I’m a perfectly healthy, successful, mature adult with a great romantic relationship (which happens to be of a fashion that would be approved of by even the strictest gender adherents). Everyone needs to GET OVER IT.

I have 2 boys and I am so sick of the little girls’ daily wear consisting of tutus, giant flowers and Wilma Flintstone necklaces. By putting ANY of that on a little girl, you are telling her, “No, no, you just sit here and don’t mess up your homemade Pinterest outfit!”. Ugh, the next generation of females is doomed! DOOOOOOOOOMED!

I got my friend a gender-neutral baby gift called Mysterio Predicts, where it’s a baby shirt with a surprise prediction for the kid’s future career. It said “Mayor of Hoboken” and at one point my friend said her husband had family in NJ and she’d found it really fitting, especially when she thought the baby was a boy. I was kind of shocked and spent enough time trying to figure out if she’d really just implied a woman couldn’t be mayor that I would have felt like an ass bringing it back up.

Where is the idea coming from that these people are forcing unwilling girls into tutus or that tutus cannot be played in? For a frame of reference I went through a lengthy childhood phase where I was thoroughly uninterested in pants, wasn’t especially keen on skirts if they didn’t twirl and went trick-or-treating one year as a ballerina ninja turtle. During this whole phase, I played hard and my parents in no way tried to restrict my learning or give me “easier” toys or anything along those lines. I watched every Disney film and ate that crap up. And now? I’m a busy, employed person who manages a theatre, owns two comedy teams and writes award-winning short films. If little girls WANT to have some frills and whatnot there is no harm in indulging them. If they don’t, that’s also fine. In the end, they’ll figure their own stuff out and I find it more insulting to imagine that they can’t think for themselves than that they might put a tutu on a spider-suit. So as a former, twirly-dress enthusiast, comic book fan and AWESOME kickball player (dress and all), I found this entry a little troubling.

I’m not trolling or trying to start a fight, it’s just that in the long run, I’m not sure if it’s any less demeaning to tell a girl that she has less worth if she wants to be pretty.

I agree with you, Cee. I was a little girl who loved to run with the boys – but usually had a skirt over my jeans. I think it’s ok for girls to want to look pretty while they play. Why shouldn’t we? Now as a mother, why would I tell my daughter it’s wrong for her to want to wear something because it is seen as “weak” by society – instead I would rather tell her to ignore what society says and become her own proud self.